Arsenal players get a grip on Cooper Tires challenge

Thursday 2 October 2014

Arsenal Football Club partner, Cooper Tire Europe, has set out to answer an age-old question – just how precise are some of the best footballers in the world?

Cooper recruited midfielders Santi Cazorla and Mesut Özil, plus forward Lukas Podolski, and designed a bespoke structure topped with four of its Zeon CS Sport performance tyres and asked the trio to guide a shot through all four rubber rings and into the goal. A secondary test involved aiming through a single tyre, hung from the top right of the goal mouth.

While German World Cup winner Podolski came out on top of the contest, scoring twice through the single tyre in the final, and Cazorla was the only one of the three to beat the four-tyre structure, the lure of the competition was too much to resist for the rest of the watching Arsenal squad – Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Alexis Sanchez, Jack Wilshere, Aaron Ramsey, Joel Campbell and even goalie Wojciech Szczesny were among the players who piled in to have a go at the Cooper challenge.

Cooper Tire Europe became the first “Official Tyre” of Barclays Premier League club, Arsenal, earlier this year. The partnership reflects the values that Cooper and Arsenal share – a passion for performance and the drive for success. The multi-year deal will see Cooper Tire Europe, which has its European technical centre and headquarters in Melksham, Wiltshire, support the London club for at least the next five Premier League seasons.

Cooper Tire Europe Marketing Communications Manager, Sarah McRoberts, said: “We were only expecting to have the three players taking part but the rest of the team at the Arsenal training ground were intrigued by the accuracy test we’d set up.

“Before long, they all wanted to have a go and prove they were the best. The test certainly seemed to provide a decent challenge, even for world-class players like these and it was fascinating to see how players of their calibre adjusted after each kick to get closer and closer to the mark until they nailed it.”